The slow strangulation of Black business opportunity

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow

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Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.

Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters

Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.

An Iconic Lynching in the North

Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two

Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali

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February 25, 2026

Cantrell Dumas, Afro.com

This week, Joint Center Senior Researcher Cantrell Dumas examines what is at stake if the federal government’s 8(a) Business Development Program is weakened or dismantled. Credit: Courtesy photo

In Washington, when a government program comes under scrutiny, the conversation often jumps too quickly from “this needs oversight” to “this should be eliminated.” That instinct is now on display in the debate over the federal government’s 8(a) Business Development Program, a long-standing initiative designed to help small businesses owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals compete in federal contracting.

For many Black-owned businesses, 8(a) is often the primary pathway into federal contracting, providing access to capital, experience and credibility that would otherwise remain out of reach in a system shaped by longstanding racial inequities. Yet even with this program, equal access to opportunity remains elusive. The U.S. Department of Labor reported in 2021 that, despite representing 24 percent of eligible businesses, minority-owned firms accounted for only 3 percent of all contract awards.

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